Baking With Cardamom: Cakes, Cookies and Buns

Cardamom is one of the better spices for baking and one of the least used outside India and Scandinavia. It's floral, a little citrusy and warm at the same time, and works almost anywhere you'd reach for vanilla or cinnamon.

How much to use

Freshly ground cardamom is much stronger than the store-bought powder most recipes were written around. If a recipe calls for the tin kind, start at the lower end of these amounts.

What it pairs well with

• Orange and lemon zest: brings out its citrus side.
• Coffee: a cardamom coffee cake works better than it has any right to.
• Chocolate, especially dark.
• Pistachio, almond, saffron, rose: the classic Indian pairings.
• Banana, apple, pear: in cakes and loaves.
• Cinnamon: warm and familiar together.

A few things that make a difference

• Grind the seeds with some of the recipe's sugar. You get a fine, even powder with no gritty bits.
• Add it in with the butter when you cream it. Fat carries the flavour well.
• Skip whole crushed pods in baking. The husks stay fibrous and end up in the crumb.
• Grind it the day you bake. Cardamom fades fast once ground.

Simple cardamom butter cookies

• 125 g butter, soft
• 80 g powdered sugar, ground with the seeds of 6 cardamom pods
• 180 g plain flour (maida)
• A pinch of salt
• 1 to 2 tablespoons milk, if needed

1. Beat the butter and cardamom sugar until pale and fluffy.
2. Mix in the flour and salt. Add milk only if the dough won't hold together.
3. Roll into small balls, flatten slightly, and place on a lined tray.
4. Bake at 170°C for 12 to 15 minutes, until just golden at the edges.
5. Cool on the tray. They firm up as they sit.

For cardamom in a Christmas bake, see our plum cake spice mix, and if you're unsure how many pods a teaspoon of powder needs, our post on cardamom pod to powder conversion covers it. Start with fresh whole Idukki cardamom and our cardamom powder guide for grinding it right.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use cardamom pods whole in a cake batter instead of grinding them?

Not really, for a cake. The husk stays tough after baking and nobody wants to bite into one in a slice of cake. Whole pods work fine in something you strain out later, like a syrup or a milk infusion, just not in batter.

My cardamom powder smells weak. Is it the spice or how I stored it?

Usually storage. Ground cardamom loses its smell within weeks even in a sealed jar, faster if the jar sits near the stove. If a fresh pod cracked open smells strong but your ground powder doesn't, the powder is just old.